


Dark

by Merixcil



Series: ReyLo Week 2018 [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Rey as a KoR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24786958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: A girl from Jakku is brought to the Knights of Ren for training
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: ReyLo Week 2018 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791526
Comments: 15
Kudos: 45





	Dark

They bring her to him far too late, she’s already been shaped by desert sands and a lifetime of making do. A scared, spitting, snarling animal. He knows immediately that he won’t be able to tame her.

“So this is the girl I’ve heard so much about.” Kylo Ren keeps his face stony as he looks down at the body that has been thrown at his feet. Weak, skinny. It will take the best part of a month just to get enough nutrients in her for her to withstand the training. But the Force swells and dances about her in well-defined patterns that look nothing like his own power. 

She spits on his shoes. He sneers at her. “What’s your name?”

She won’t talk, and when he probes her mind for answers she throws up enough of a wall against him that he decides to let her keep her secrecy for now. Her spirit will need to be broken, but only an idiot would put out a fire that wild when they could be using it for their own ends.

The Knights of Ren are supposed to train together, to rise together. In practice it doesn’t work like that, because the First Order needs Kylo Ren more than they need the others right now, but Kylo Ren returns to his soldiers after every audience with the Supreme Leader and smiles when he sees their progress.

The girl from Jakku is one of just three new recruits they have picked up since the Knights of Ren left Ahch-to, but she’s the best of them. Kylo does his best not to speak to highly of her when he is brought before Snoke, trying to keep her out of the limelight. She is strong and she is brave but she can be spectacularly stupid in her impulsiveness. In his opinion, she’s not ready for active combat but he doubts the Supreme Leader will see it that way.

His soul feels shredded, his heart out of place in the wide open cavity of his chest. Kylo pulls his back up just as straight as he can manage and marches back into the training grounds and before he can blink, the girls is upon him.

She likes the other Knights so much better than he. Perhaps because they weren’t the one who sentenced her to be one of them, or perhaps because she feels safer with other women. Either way, no one knows her name.

“Watch out!” Moreenha Ren calls from the other side of the room as the stuttering orange of the girl’s training blade swings towards his face. Kylo ducks out of the way, rolls across the floor and grabs a training blade of his own. His real lightsabre is stuck to his hip and really, if he were trying to teach her a lesson about obedience he would use it to gift her a shiny new scar.

In the three years she’s been here, she’s never done anything she hasn’t wanted to, save for staying confined to her quarters. Kylo has felt the Force moving around her, debating a real escape attempt against the two failed efforts she made when she was first brought here.

 _I don’t like it here._ The Force whispers through her. _But I don’t have anywhere better to be._

Kylo raises his blade and brings it down against hers, revelling in the grind of one ‘sabre against the other. She parries and slips away from him, then rounds back with a shriek, putting all her strength into the two armed swing she aims at his legs.

They go on for the best part of the next hour, till they’re both grinning and sweaty and the others have stopped their practice to come and watch. “You’re not bad, scavenger.” Ben tells her.

“I’m not a scavenger.” She snaps, though she doesn’t stop smiling.

Kylo Ren wakes in the middle of the night, and feels the girl from Jakku moving through the Force around him. He can feel all the Knights of Ren, but not like this. Not like her. The Knights are beholden to the Dark Side but the girl keeps away from them as much as possible when they run through Force drills, and when she pulls up her power from the deep ocean of the Force that lies between them all, it doesn’t smell the same as the rest of them.

Cautiously, he reaches out to her through the Force. She is sleeping, she is quiet. She still won’t tell him her name. As soon as he touches the pieces of her he can reach, she reaches back towards him, curious and bright. She wraps herself around him and explores the parts of him he offers up.

He lies in the darkness, painfully awake and holding tight to his breath. She is never going to be calm, never going to be a soldier, never going to fit neatly into Snoke’s palm the way they were designed to.

 _The Force will free me._ Kylo assures her sleeping mind when she probes the nexus of his power and is puzzled by how much deeper and darker it is than her own.

 _Free yourself._ She replies. Then she lets him go and slips away of her own accord into the black.

“You have to let me look into your mind.” Kylo explains to her.

“I don’t have to let you do anything.” The girl replies. She’s working on the hilt of her lightsabre, rearranging the crystal she has spent so many days meditating over.

Kyber crystals are rare. They’re lucky to have them. The other Knights have blades in shades of red, magenta and deep bronze. But the girl from Jakku has a purple blade, standing out like a sore thumb when they ignite on the main floor of their training vessel. Kylo is desperately glad that no one from the First Order has come snooping around in a while, he doesn’t know what Snoke will do to her if he finds out she’s not following the code the same as the others.

 _You have to._ He pleads with her. _The Supreme Leader will know if I haven’t seen into your mind._

“Fuck the Supreme Leader.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? I mean it.”

With a flick of his wrist, Kylo pins her against the wall. “I am your commanding officer.”

“You are a scared little boy in a high castle.” She spits. He remembers the way his boots had shone in the light reflecting off her saliva when she was first brought here.

She’s not a girl anymore, not really. She’s in her early twenties, wearing a self-styled tunic that wouldn’t be so out of place on her desert home world, picked out in black and grey and red. Her features are so soft, her heart so bright. For the first time he wonders if she might not belong here and immediately wishes that she would stay all the same.

He unpicks the first strands of her consciousness, as delicately as he is able. She struggles and flails physically but he’s so much bigger than her, her main advantage is that she’s fast.

Memories of endless sand dunes and unspeakable thirst pour out of her mind like so much sand. He pities her squalid upbringing and she feels that pity only to throw it back in his face. She writhes, her command of the Force catching up to her as she digs herself into Kylo’s heart and pushes him back.

She falls to the floor, he tries to step towards her but he can’t stand the blinding Light pouring off her.

“You’ll never be like me.” He says. Because it’s true and he thinks that if he lets himself say it she might find it in her to refute him.

She doesn’t. “I never said I wanted to be.”

Without a word, Kylo reaches out a hand to help him up. She takes it, and they both pretend that everything’s fine.

She looks so beautiful, standing in the open doorway leading to the upper deck of the _Finaliser._ It was a mistake to ever take her off the training ship. She’s wrapped in a long dark cloak that used to be Kylo’s, he’d been wondering what happened to it. It’s the middle of their sleep cycle and he’s been caught on his way to the bathroom, without a weapon handy, without anything but his pyjamas and the Force.

“Where are you going?” His voice is so painfully soft. He should be angry with her, he should be raging. He should throw her against the wall and keep hitting her over the head till she falls unconscious.

She bites her lip. “Away. Sorry.”

“You don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“I have anywhere else to go.”

The bulge of a packed bag sits underneath her cloak, he can just about see the clean silver of her lightsabre handle. She’s not wrong. With thrilling clarity, he realises he’s not going to stop her.

The light from the Star Destroyer beyond frames her in a perfect halo. Kylo reaches out through the Force just to feel the feather light brush of her against him all over again. He doesn’t bother trying to twist his way any deeper than she will let him, he learned that lesson a long time ago.

She will never be Dark, she will just adapt to her environment. She-

“Thanks. For everything.” She smiles a slight sad smile and ducks through the door. She looks so out of place on a First Order ship. Too well put together, she was built to fight.

“Bye, girl from Jakku.” _I’ll miss you._

“My name’s Rey.” She tells him, as the door slides closed, and the interior of his personal shuttle is plunged into dark.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted as part of a multi chaptered 'ReyLo Week 2018' fic that I'm trying to split up. If you think you've read it before, you probably have
> 
> Comments on the previous posting of this fic (just ask if you want me to remove yours) include:
> 
> >melody1987: You wrote this in 45 minutes?!?!!!! How dare you  
> >This was beautiful and if you ever did expand on this, I’d definitely read.  
> >>Merixcil:It was all the time I had Mel!!!!!  
> >>I say I might write something longer like I'll ever find the time...
> 
> >ZiaLisa: Loved it!  
> >>Merixcil: Thank you!
> 
> >Kisserey: This was so good. The first chapter about colours was also beautifully written.  
> >>Merixcil: Thank you so much!


End file.
